Software Review

September 14, 2003|Rebecca Rohan The Washington Post

Spybot Search & Destroy

By PepiMK Software

Free (donation requested)

Win 95 or newer/Win NT 4 or newer

www.safer-networking.org

Spybot S&D identifies the spyware that some freebie programs plant on PCs to snitch back to advertisers, developers and other eavesdroppers. Then Spybot lets you evict them by checking a box next to program names on a list.

It's much more aggressive about this than other spyware removal utilities, which is both good and bad. Spybot S&D rounds up all kinds of spybots -- even those you should keep, like CDilla (used to prevent copying of some commercial software) or the benign ad-downloading code that makes your free e-mail program run. So before you bounce each program Spybot flags, click on its name to see such details as its maker, a brief description and what other programs may stop working if you yank it. An included tutorial and well-placed warnings also help, as does Spybot's practice of preselecting only known offenders for removal.

If you make a bad call, a "Recovery" button helps undo mistakes. The next button, "Immunize," prevents close to 500 spy products from insinuating themselves onto your system in the first place. Spybot also seeks out Web cookies, but, again, not all of these are evil. The great thing about Spybot S&D is that it puts you in control of who spies and remembers, but this control requires some caution.